Christie defends recommending to Trump that Chris Wray lead the FBI: 'He's done a very good job'

Former New Jersey governor and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie defended recommending Christopher Wray to lead the FBI to then-President Donald Trump. 

Christie said Wray is receiving undue criticism from conservatives for how he has handled himself as FBI director, including in regard to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which the bureau has been largely silent about.

"I was one of the people who recommended Christopher Wray to President Trump, and I’m proud to have done so, and I think he’s done a very good job," Christie said Wednesday on the "Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show."

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Christie said Wray successfully got rid of "every part" of Comey-era leadership at the bureau, which is when many conservatives claimed the law enforcement agency purportedly became corrupted. Christie also began to defend Wray's handling of the FBI search warrant that led to the Mar-a-Lago raid but was interrupted by a hard break.

Host Buck Sexton asked why Republican voters would believe Christie could eradicate perceived politicization of the Justice Department and the federal bureaucracy, given how conservatives views the FBI director.

"Chris Wray doesn't decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn't -- he investigates," Christie responded, instead blaming the politicization on a long line of Democratic attorneys general including Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland and Garland's deputy, Lisa Monaco.

"People get confused about this – the FBI doesn't decide who gets prosecuted. Many times the FBI doesn't even decide who gets investigated," he said. 

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Christie said that when he served as U.S. Attorney in Newark, he would recommend to the Bush FBI that they investigate one matter or another, and that later in the process, it would be federal prosecutors who decided if a case went forward or not based on facts collected by the bureau.

The former governor agreed, however, with the assertion the Trump-Russia investigation was a "sham" – but underlined that Wray had "nothing to do with it."

"That was Jim Comey and the leadership of the FBI under Jim Comey, and when Chris Wray got in… he fired all of them," Christie said. 

Christie also had pointed words for how the Department of Justice is conducting the investigation into Hunter Biden.

He said Wray has been wise not to speak publicly on the matter because it is not the director's role to do so during an ongoing probe – and that the questions should instead be posed to the Trump-appointed prosecutor in Delaware, David Weiss.

Weiss and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley have offered conflicting views on whether the case against the younger Biden was allowed full purview.

"Yes, [Hunter] did get a sweetheart deal, and it never should have taken five years to do two misdemeanor tax counts and to dismiss a gun count," he said. "Two, I don’t know whether Weiss was truly not independent or is truly incompetent -- but it’s one or the other."

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He added, "And that’s where I think oversight has to come in from the Congress, to bring Weiss in front of the committee and make a determination whether he’s incompetent or whether he has had his hands tied by the Justice Department."

Wray notably served as Christie's attorney during the BridgeGate scandal in 2013, when lanes were closed on the George Washington bridge as a reported swipe at Fort Lee Democratic Mayor Mark Sokolich, who had declined to endorse the then-governor for reelection.